The wheels have come off in Iraq;How many more lives will we waste?

For No Good Reason

By BOB HERBERT
New York Times Op Ed

"You can keep the flowers blooming on their graves forever. It won't change the fact that they died for nothing."

- antiwar protester, circa 1969

It's finally becoming clear on Capitol Hill, and maybe even in the White House, that the United States cannot win the war in Iraq. The only question still to be decided is how many more American lives will be wasted in George W. Bush's grand debacle.

The wheels have fallen off the cart in Iraq, and only those in the farthest reaches of denial are hanging on to the illusion of an American triumph over the insurgency.

Air Force General Richard Myers, who retired Friday as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was publicly chastised at an Armed Services Committee hearing last week by Senator John McCain of Arizona, who has always been a strong proponent of the war.

Senator McCain bluntly declared that "things have not gone as we had planned or expected, nor as we were told by you, General Myers."

The general replied, "I don't think this committee or the American public has ever heard me say that things are going very well in Iraq."

Read the rest at Truthout.